Archive for August, 2012
With the groundbreaking of the Davis residence in the beautiful custom home community of Seven Oaks, Sterling Custom Homes is proud to celebrate our 75th custom home designed by Steve Todd of The Austin Design Group! Steve explains, “My relationship with Sterling over the years has been one of the high points of our 29 years in business. Our common values of professionalism and integrity make it very easy for us to work together, ultimately getting the client a well designed, and well built home. The level of detail and expertise they put into building a custom home is matched by few in the industry.”
“Nobody builds more Steve Todd designed homes than Sterling Custom Homes,” exclaims Duke McDowell, President of Sterling Custom Homes. “We have developed a collaborative working relationship with Steve that has created the very best custom home product and process in the industry today.”
Thinking Alike - A custom home is a complex undertaking, one that has thousands of variables to be managed. It is critical to employ a builder and designer who see solutions to the many challenges that are presented on each project. The benefit to the client is a seamless working relationship that eliminates the finger-pointing so common between builder and architect. Read More→
NAHB: Home Builder Confidence on the Rise
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NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market hits a 5-1/2 year high!
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) rose to 37 in August, which is the highest it’s been in five and a half years. Since February 2007, the HMI has not been as high as 37. This also marks the fourth straight month that the HMI has risen. Although it is not quite at 50, a level that home builders consider building conditions o be good rather than poor, chairman of the NAHB, Barry Rutenberg states, “While there is still much room for improvement, we have come a long way from the depths of the recession and the outlook appears to be brightening.”
There are three components that make up the HMI: one gauges current sales conditions, another gauges traffic of prospective buyers, and the last gauges sales expectations for the next six months. All of these posted gains this month, and are the highest they have been since February 2007 as well. Read More→
Building Custom Homes on Lake Travis
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Custom home being built on Lake Travis
The landscape surrounding Lake Travis is home to arguably some of the most beautiful vistas in all of Texas. Nestled in between the hills of the Texas Hill Country, the Lake Travis area is the perfect marriage of land and water. As the Colorado River was dammed to create Lake Travis, the water level rose nearly straight up the sides of the hills. This created prime waterfront real estate all along the 270+ miles of shoreline.
The views from the homes built on the waterfront properties of Lake Travis are breathtaking to say the least, as they are built on the top of hills, cliffs, and bluffs that overlook the lake. Building custom homes on Lake Travis can be difficult because of the unique terrain of these hills, cliffs, and bluffs. At Sterling Custom Homes, we have many years of experience building custom homes on the challenging waterfront properties on Lake Travis. Let’s discuss a few of the design techniques we implement to build the best custom homes on Lake Travis, which set us apart from other custom home builders in Lakeway.
Have you ever had some kind of plumbing maintenance done on your home, causing you to turn your home’s water completely off? Those days are over. With the Manabloc Water Distribution System, you can control the water flow to all parts of your home in one place. In this edition of Sterling’s Best Practices, Vick Pope of Sterling Custom Homes explains the functionality and benefits of the Manabloc. Read More→
Unacceptable.
For generations, our mothers and grandmothers have long tried to ingrain in our minds that “cleanliness is next to godliness.” Apparently, some Austin luxury home builders have taken this life lesson to heart more than others. The way Austin custom home builders keep and maintain their construction sites can have a variety of implications.
When you are driving past or even visiting a custom home builder’s construction site, the condition of the build site is the first thing you’ll notice. If there are building materials strewn about, you might get the impression that the builder is not very organized, which could even extend into their office as well. This is common during the framing phase of construction. Lumber should be separated and organized into two piles, for usable and unusable lumber. Some scrap lumber can be used for smaller framing projects like water heater bases, among others. These scraps need to be stacked neatly on a flat surface to prevent the risk of warping.
Our build site.
Over the course of construction there might be hundreds of people between workers, clients, potential clients, realtors, and more, who will walk the construction site. Build sites that are not maintained on a regular basis present a higher risk of tripping and other hazards. When a construction site is maintained properly, that’s one less thing all parties have to worry about. Also, when a site is clean, it’s much easier to notice the craftsmanship of the custom home’s numerous features.